Vor. V, No. 3 APRIL, 1924 


Smith College Studies in 
Modern Languages 


EDITORS 
CAROLINE B. BOURLAND HOWARD R. PATCH 
ERNST H. MENSEL MARGARET ROOKE 
ALBERT SCHINZ 


THE GENESIS OF THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S 
SAKE” IN GERMANY AND IN ENGLAND 
PART II 


BY 


ROSE FRANCES EGAN 
Assistant Professor of English, Smith College 


NORTHAMPTON, MASS. PARIS 
SMITH COLLEGE LIBRAIRIE F. CHAMPION 


Published Quarterly by the 
Departments of Modern Languages of Smith College 


SMITH COLLEGE STUDIES IN MODERN 


LANGUAGES 


THE SmitH COLLEGE STUDIES IN MoDERN LANGUAGES are 
published quarterly in October, January, April, and July, by the 
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scription price is seventy-five cents for single numbers, two dollars 
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addressed to the SmirH CoLLEGE LinRARY, NORTHAMPTON, MASs. 


VOLUME I 


Nos. 1-4. HELEN Maxwett Kine, Les Doctrines Littéraires 


Nos. 2-3. 


de la Quotidienne, 1814-1830. 


VOLUME II 


Mary AvucustA JorpAN, An Unpublished Letter of 
William James. 


PaAuL RoBERT LIEDER, Scott and Scandinavian Lit- 


erature. 


ELizABETH A. Foster, Le Dernier Séjour de J.-J. Rous- 
seau a Paris, 1770-78. 


Rose FRANCES EGAN, The Genesis of the Theory of 
‘“‘Art for Art’s Sake” in Germany and in England, 


VOLUME III 


JosEF WirHR, Knut Hamsun, His Personality and- 


his Outlook upon Life. 

Howarp Ro.iitn Patcu, The Tradition of the Goddess 
Fortuna, In Roman Literature and in the Transi- 
tional Period. 


Howarp Rotiin Patcu, The Tradition of the Goddess” 


Fortuna, In Medieval Philosophy and Literature. 


(Continued on page 3 of cover.) 


} 





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L.. vi APRIL, 1924 





th College Studies in 
odern Languages 
eer EDITORS 
CAROLINE B. BOURLAND . HOWARD R. PATCH 
_ ERNST H. MENSEL MARGARET ROOKE 
ia ALBERT SCHINZ 
ESIS OF THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S 
S eM IN GERMANY AND IN ENGLAND 
PART II ; 
BY | ‘ 
ROSE FRANCES EGAN | 
: 7 es PARIS , 
SO LIBRAIRIE E. CHAMPION hg 
Published Quarterly by the es. oa 


Departments of Modern Languages of Smith College 


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The Colleviate Press 
GEORGE BANTA PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
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THE GENESIS OF THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S 
SAKE” IN GERMANY AND IN ENGLAND 
PART II 


BY 


ROSE FRANCES EGAN 
Assistant Professor of English, Smith College 





PREFACE 


For the benefit of those who have not read recently the first in 
my series of articles on The Genesis of the Theory of ‘“‘Art for Art’s 
Sake” in Germany and in England, I shall give a brief résumé of 
it.1 The paper had two sections, the first dealing with the history 
of the term art for art’s sake and with a working definition of it 
as used in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the 
second with the growth of a new concept of a work of art (Kunst- 
werk) in Germany around 1800. 


SECTION I 


History of the term. It was pointed out that the first use of the 
phrase art pour l'art was not ascribed rightly to Cousin in 1818, 
nor to Victor Hugo in 1829, but according to recently discovered 
evidence should be tentatively attributed to Benjamin Constant. 
In the latter’s Journal Intime, published for the first time in 1895, 
an entry for XJI le 20 pluviose (February 10, 1804) employs the 
term in its modern sense. 

In England, the equivalent phrase art for art’s sake was prob- 
ably not accepted so early, though the idea is to be found in an 
unpublished passage of the Reminiscences of Henry Crabb Robin- 
son, relating a conversation with Winkelmann? in 1801. The 
earliest use of the term yet found in print is in a letter written by 
Thackeray in 1839 to his mother. This, however, was not pub- 
lished until 1894. : 


Working definition of the term, as used in the second half of the 
nineteenth century. This definition obviously must ignore the 
clashes of opinion within the school and emphasize only those 
elements which may be regarded as fundamental and generally 
recognized. The leading doctrines are: 


I. All art pour Vari men are to be known by their common 
aspirations—freedom for the artist, and order and beauty in his 
creations. Where these conditions exist in combination, true 
works of art are produced. 


II. Art has its own distinct sphere, in which no one but the 
artist is sovereign. _ Consequently, he can neither rule nor serve 
elsewhere. , 


1 Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, vol. II, No. 4. 
2T am indebted to Professor Ernst Mensel of Smith College for pointing out 
that the acquaintance to whom H. C. R. referred is not the great: critic of art 
who was killed in 1768, but in all likelihood a lesser known person, a physician 
and a man of culture. 
V 


v1 PREFACE 


III. Form is the distinguishing and unique quality of art. 
In this connection it is necessary to notice: 


A. That when the artist aims at any objective other than 
perfection of form, he denies his own right to create, and tres- 
passes upon the domain of others. 


B. That form as used by these men is not to be confounded 
with the popular meanings of the term, where it is opposed to 
content and regarded as something separable, in fact or in 
thought. They regard it as appearance only, an outward 
manifestation of an imaginative conception, whose beauty is 
dependent on the perfect correspondence of this concrete 
manifestation to the vision within. 


C. That since form in this sense is the very essence of art, 
it follows that expression,—that is, ‘‘the finer accommodation of 
speech” (or of other media) “to the vision within,’’—is the 
prime task of the artist. 


IV. Where “expression” is the means to the end, the respon- 
sibility for its perfection lies wholly with the artist. He can find his 
sole guide and his most exacting mentor in his own artistic con- 
science. 


V. A true artist belongs to no school and respects no groupings 
among others. He is concerned with his individual vision, not with 
the common qualities implied in movements favoring classicism or 
romanticism, realism or idealism. Conversely, he has esteem for 
others who respect their own inspiration, no matter how far apart 
their points of view are from his. 


VI. The true artist works without regard to the effect his 
creations may have upon others. His end is solely the aesthetic 
perfection of each work of art. Consequently, the percipient who 
considers it rightly must regard it in itself, in the spirit of con- 
templation. 

SECTION II 

The rise of a new concept of a work of art (Kunstwerk) in Ger- 
many around 1800 brought with it attending variations in the 
connotations of the terms art (Kunst) and form (Form). Although 
many of these changes came before Kant, the emphasis has been 
placed on his theories and on those of his contemporaries or 
immediate successors, because the major developments in a 
theory of art for art’s sake began with him. 


I. Kant’s chief contributions to the new concept of a Kunst- 
werk were: 

A. The theory that a work of art is the product of the imagin- 

ation working in harmony with the understanding; that is, of 


PREFACE Vil 


the free creative power finding restraint and form through 
voluntary surrender to the spirit but not the control of the 
concept-making faculty. 


B. The rigid distinction between a work of fine art as made 
by an artist and a work of craftsmanship as made by an artisan: 


1. The artisan produces something in accordance with a 
pattern or type; the artist ignores types and creates unique 
products, which by their very individuality and richness 
suggest ideas richer than those implicit in concepts. 


2. The former is constantly assisted by rules or formulae 
laid down for his own and others’ guidance; the latter 
usually ignores them, as imposing restraint upon his 
imagination. 


3. The former is limited by a purpose, the end for which 
his product is designed; the latter ignores a purpose in his 
endeavor to manifest his conception in its wholeness. 


C. The theory that a work of art is not a beautiful thing, but 
a beautiful representation of a thing; its characteristic quality 
is form, 


D. The theory that a work of art has ‘“‘purposiveness without 
purpose.”’? A work of craftsmanship is to be recognized by its 
conformity to an end both in its author’s intention and in its 
owner’s use: a work of nature is regarded as adapted to definite 
ends only when its form is disregarded, and its substantial 
character is considered; a work of art, as pure form, is incapable 
of being put to use in this sense. Kant, it is true, does make a 
new category of ‘‘dependent beauty” to include the beauty of a 
cathedral, of a garden, and of other commonly accepted works 
of fine art, which are of definite service to men. But however 
beautiful they may be, he excludes them from pure works of 
art, such as a poem, a statue, a painting. 

He goes further in his elimination of purpose in art so as to 
include that which may dominate the mind. Does a work of 
art exist to give gratification, satisfaction, agreeable sensations? 
If it is so regarded, he taught, its full effect as such is ignored 
and its appreciation limited to a single side. If, on the other 
hand, the percipient’s mind is open to its full effectiveness, he 
will realize in contemplation that a work of art, like a work of 
nature viewed as form, will stir in him, as an individual, 
thoughts of its many possibilities. His reaction, however, is 
‘purely subjective and is not to be accounted as final or defini- 
tive. But through the capacity of a poem, for example, to 


viil 


PREFACE 


produce this impression upon the reader, will come his recog- 
nition of it as a true work of art. 


II. Schiller’s contributions to the new connotation are: 


A. The doctrine that a work of art is distinctly not a work of 
nature nor a pure representation of the ideal. Its province is 
between nature and mind, reconciling in play the divergent and 
actually irreconcilable characteristics of each sphere. Without 
a work of art, men would find no escape from chaos and 
sensuality on the one hand, or pure thought and indifference 
to life on the other, except through the medium of the barren 
concepts of the understanding,—barren, because they ignore 
sensation, feeling, and also, the existence of the ideal. 


B. The doctrine (developed from Kant’s theory of art as 
representation) of art as form or aesthetic appearance. By this 
Schiller means that a work of art must never be regarded as an 
imitation of nature, nor as a serious presentation of ideas, but 
as the representation of an imaginative vision in which the real 
and the ideal in semblance exist in harmony. But it is only an 
appearance and must be regarded as such, having no validity 
as substance or doctrine. 


C. The theory that the artist’s sole task is destroying all 
matter in his work, so that it will become pure form and nothing 
else. 


III. Goethe’s contributions: 


A. As a convert from Storm and Stress, Goethe found his 
chief task in later life in distinguishing a work of art from a 
work of nature. He emphasized the following differences: 


1. Nature never attains perfection because it is always 
in the process of development; art must attain the perfec- 
tion implicit in the conception. It is this achievement of 
the highest possibilities inherent in his conception that 
Goethe calls form. 


is 


2. Nature is to be known for the variety and complexity 
in the organic structure of its units, but since it is often the 
victim of untoward forces, it seldom attains completeness 
and integrity. In art, however, this organic unity is 
imperative. A great work of art is to be recognized not only 
by its achievement of this unity of the manifold but by its 
maintenance of the life principle within. The attainment 


PREFACE 1x 


of living form, “giving life to the whole’? Goethe regarded 
as the end of art. 


B. As a consequence of these theories, he taught that the 
summit of art is to be found in the execution. Subject-matter, 
its source and its quality, in his theorizing are often, (though 
not always,) matters of comparative indifference; the execu- 
tion is invariably regarded as paramount. 


IV. Schelling’s contributions: 


A. This philosopher’s aesthetic system rests on his differentia- 
tion of art and philosophy, both of which he regarded as valid 
but distinct methods of approach to the Absolute. 


B. Since, in his theory, the validity of each is dependent on its 
freedom from interference from the other, it follows that 
neither the method nor the ends of philosophy are desirable in 
art. Consequently he eliminated from the domain of art 
Schematismus, that kind of representation where the partic- 
ular is to be known through the general, and Allegory, where 
the general is to be recognized in the specific instance. He de- 
fined true art as symbolic, or ‘‘the synthesis of the two, where 
neither the general signifies the particular, nor the particular 
the general, but where both are strictly one.” 


C. He called this artistic quality, which is evident where 
contraries are reconciled, Indifference. It is the dominating 
quality of a true work of art. When it is present, the body and 
soul of the work cannot be distinguished, nor the form and the 
matter, nor the ideal element and the real. Consequently art 
is necessarily neither of the world of time or eternity, but in a 
world of its own, independent, self-sufficient and self-subsisting. 





The Genesis of the Theory of ‘‘Art for Art’s 
Sake” in Germany and in England. 
Part II 


RosE FRANCES EGAN 


THE NEW CONCEPT OF AN ARTIST 


It has already been shown in my discussion of a new conception 
of a work of art arising in Germany around 1800 how the term art 
lost the connotation it had carried since Horace, and acquired a 
sixiéme sens, especially in the phrase ‘‘work of art”? (Kunstwerk).} 
It is my intention now to show how that disintegration of an old 
concept, allied to other influences, affected the notion of the 
producer of a work of art (Kiinstler). It was not until after Batteux 
and Lessing, as well as others, had endeavored to find both the 
common principle of all the fine arts, and the distinguishing char- 
acteristics of each species, that the term Kiinstler gained the sig- 
nificance of maker of any fine art. But at the very time that this 
change ‘was being effected in the scope of the concept, other 
content was being given the term by the new aesthetic philosophy. 
How far apart in meaning the word “‘artist”’ (Kiinsiler) was as used 
in 1766 from that in 1799 may be seen in the two passages that 
follow. The first is to be found in the Schleswigsche Litteratur- 
briefe and was written by Heinrich W. von Gerstenberg. To him 
an artist is one who conforms to a pattern called art. He is 
discussing Sophocles and Corneille: ‘‘The latter shows the artist,’ 
the former a Greek. We can all be artists,? but how rare a Greek!” 
Compare this to Goethe’s use in his 1799 Notes on Dilettantism, 
where the dilettante is he who conforms to the pattern and the 
artist the one who escapes from its confines: ‘‘In opposition to the 
general maxim, the dilettante will thus be subject to more severe 
criticism than the artist,2 who, resting upon a secure basis of art, 


1 Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, vol. II, No. 4, pp. 5-61. 

2 The italics are mine. 

3 Litteraturdenkmae d. 18 u. 19 Jahrh., vol. XXIX, p. 15: “Jenes zeigt mir 
den Kiinstler, die letztern den Griechen: Kiinstler kénnen wir alle werden—aber 
ach! wer ein Grieche wire.” 


1 


2 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


incurs less danger in departing from rules, and may even by that 
means enlarge the province of art itself.’” 

In this connection it is essential to notice that the l’art pour 
art men of the nineteenth century, whose progenitors we are 
seeking, seldom referred to themselves except as artists or men of 
taste, and on these grounds only demanded the privileges of 
independence and self-direction. It is possible that they might 
have been more widely understood if they had claimed genius 
or inspiration or even poetic madness as the source of their power, 
for the belief in the irresponsible and in the guided poet still 
prevailed, especially in Germany and in England. As it happened, 
their claims to autonomy as artists were generally misapprehended 
and seldom received even a sympathetic hearing from the masses 
of men. Part of the difficulty, it is true, was the result of the 
average man’s failure to keep step with the march forward in 
artistic theory and in changing connotations of its terms, and of 
his consequent proneness to think of an artist only as a technician 
or stylist; but another and large part was owing to a common 
aversion to the individualism fostered by the new critical philos- © 
ophy and to its implicit pluralism. Has the theory of the special 
spheres of religion, of morals, of science, of art, any validity? Has 
the artist sovereignty in his own domain? Is he, when acting as 
an artist, subservient to no power from without and rightfully 
obedient only to his own artistic conscience? And above all, has 
he the right to force his personality upon us, to show us life through 
his peculiar temperament and not, as seems to have been the 
practice of artists in the past, through the vision of the best 
thought of the time? These were the questions which were and 
are asked frequently by intelligent opponents of lV’art pour Vart, 
and which indicate how deep are the roots of a doctrine upheld, 
often unintelligently and unphilosophically, by members of this 
school. * 

In this paper it will be my hope to show that these roots are to 
be found—not exclusively, it is true—in German critical and 
aesthetic philosophy from Kant to Friedrich Schlegel and Schelling. 


4 Weimar ed., Pt. I, vol. XLVII, p. 319: ‘‘Gerade der allgemeinen Maxime 
entgegen wird also der Dilettant einem mehr rigoristischen Urtheil zu unterwerfen 
sein als selbst der Kiinstler, der, weil er auf einer sichern Kunstbasis ruht, mit min- 
der Gefahr sich von den Regeln entfernen und dadurch das Reich der Kunst selbst 
erweitern kann.” 


THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 3 


There we shall discover formulated much earlier than in the 
school of Flaubert and Pater, doctrines of the autonomy of the 
artist, of the validity of the artistic conscience within its own 
sphere, and of the necessity of originality or peculiarity in a work 
of art. In the analysis of the first two, I must give credit to Gustav 
Lanson, who has already marked out the main roads of those who 
would trace the philosophical origins of nineteenth century 
Vart pour Vart. The third, I hope to show, is equally significant 
and essential to our comprehension of the movement as a whole. 

‘It is often stated that the theory of art for art’s sake had 
its ultimate origin in opposition to the critical formalism of the 
neo-classic period. M. Lanson attacks®> this assumption in 
Cassagne’s work on La Theorie de Ari pour Art en France 
because, he argues, the movement which was headed by Victor 
Hugo, and which aimed at freeing the form from the domination 
of the rules, should not be confounded with the real l’art pour 
Vart drive which came later and whose objective was the freeing 
of the content from the restrictions which time and theory had 
placed upon the fitness of certain subject-matter for art. It is 
not within the scope of this paper to consider the specific problem 
raised by M. Lanson, but it is clearly not beyond its prerogatives 
to show what doctrines Kant and others regarded as inimical to 
the free ‘art they were upholding. 3 

In a few words, they were two: that the artist should be 
guided by his understanding and its categories rather than by 
the free activity of his imagination; and, at the other extreme, 
that he should follow his genius, his natural impulse, in repudiation 
of all law. Both theories according to Kant and his followers 
honored the reverse of the truly artistic process. Both, in antici- 
pation, violated the Kantian formula which came to be accepted, 
with variations that did not destroy its essential significance, as 
the final description of the state of artistic creation, ‘‘Imagina- 
tion’s free conformity to law.’’® That law in art, to Kant, received 
its sanction from the Understanding, the faculty of concepts, and 
to his followers, from the Reason (Vernunft), the faculty of ideas, 
is not, as I hope will be clear, ultimately as important a distinction 
-as it seems at first sight. For they were one in their opposition to 
5 Revue d’ histoire littéraire de la France, 1907, pp. 163-7. 


_ & Ky, d. Ur., I, 1, Buch 1, Allgem. Anmerkung, Werke, Hartenstein, Leipzig, 
1838-9: “ . . . . die freie Gesetzmissigkeit der Einbildungskraft.” 


4 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


the seventeenth and eighteenth century rules, and to the vagaries 
of Storm and Stress. 


Now, it goes almost without saying, that the Understanding, 
in Kant’s definition, was responsible for the formal rules guiding 
literary art in the neo-classic period and for the dictum which 
demanded that nothing exist in art which was not pleasing to its 
categories. It was because of this situation that the critic assumed 
a dictatorship in that age, and that external law was accepted as 
final by most of its literary men. It is clear that these laws had 
to them practically the same sanction as science has to the masses 
to-day; and that they governed the universal practice of men, 
because they arose out of “common sense,” Voltaire’s “jugement 
profond.”” They were comprehensible, therefore, not only on 
grounds of authority but on those of the best experience of the 
race and of its consensus of opinion. 


With the coming of critical philosophy, however, and its change 
of the center of interest from custom and tradition to that of 
individual discovery, and the categories of Freedom and Nature, 
the rules of the understanding and the authority of the literary 
critic gradually gave way. Aesthetically considered, Kant’s 
primary function was to remove a Kunstwerk from the domination 
of abstract universals. ‘‘Nature,” he said several times, “‘must 
give the rule to art.’””” It is not a clearly defined rule of the under- 
standing to which he referred. “It (the rule) cannot be reduced to 
a formula and serve as a precept, for then the judgment upon the 
beautiful would be determinable according to concepts.”® “Gen- 
ius,’ which in his definition is essential to an artist, “is a talent 
for producing that for which no definite rule can be given.”® A 
work of art that has only regularity to commend it will not 
entertain long: ‘‘Nay, rather it will impose a burdensome constraint 
upon the imagination.””?” 


7eg.: Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 46: “Dass die Natur... . der Kunst die Regel 
vorschreibe.”’ 

8 Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 47: ‘‘Sie (die Regel) kann in keiner Formel abgefasst zur - 
Vorschrift dienen; denn sonst wiirde das Urtheil iiber das Schéne nach Begriffen 
bestimmbar sein.” 

9 Ibid., Sec. 46: ‘““Man sieht hieraus, dass Genie ein Talent sei, dasjenige, wozu 
sich keine bestimmte Regel geben lasst, hervorzubringen.” 

10 Tbid., I, 1, Buch 1, Allgem. Anmerkung: “ . . . ihn der Gegenstand nicht 
linger unterhalte, vielmehr der Einbildungskraft einen lastigen Zwang anthue.” 


THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 5 


A chance remark of Schiller’s shows us how dead an issue was 
the authority of the rules in German philosophical circles in 1795. 
In his dedication of the Aesthetic Letters he wrote, ““The liberty of 
action you prescribe is rather a necessity for me than a constraint. 
Little exercised in formal rules, I shall scarcely incur the risk 
of sinning against good taste by any undue use of them.’! Else- 
where he spoke of the “‘fetters of rule’”’” and of “the harsh restraint 
of rules.” 

It is to be noticed that Goethe and Friedrich Schlegel often 
wrote of new rules, ‘‘objective rules,”’ but these are in no sense the 
old formal rules guiding technique, but “laws” as they believed, 
in the Kantian sense, subjectively discovered and necessarily of 
universal validity. Goethe wrote scornfully of the dilettante, 
who “subjects himself to the necessity of working by false rules 

. . . because he does not understand the true objective rules.’ 
Beauty, according to Friedrich Schlegel, is equally independent 
of the control of necessity and of the rules.» The artist, who obeys 
the fundamental laws of beauty and the objective rules of art, 
will in all other respects be unconditionally free.’ 

At the same time that they decried formal rules, they de- 
nounced with even greater emphasis the lawlessness that char- 
acterized the productions of the Storm and Stress men. The ghost 
of formalism had partly been laid in the Geniezeit, but the other 
and equally dangerous one of Geseizlosigkeit stalked in its place. 
Where the Age of Reason had emphasized law as necessarily 
operative in artistic creation, and had, as a result, deprived the 
artist of freedom, the Gemiezeit had by its theory of genius, of a 
human creative power that, by obedience to instinct, operates as 
efiicaciously as the creative power behind nature, rejected all 


Brief I, Sdmtliche Werke, Sékularausgabe: “Die Freiheit des Ganges, welche 
Sie mir vorschreiben, ist kein Zwang, vielmehr ein Bediirfnis fiir mich. Wenig 
geiibt im Gebrauche schulgerechter Formen, werde ich kaum in Gefahr sein, mich 
durch Missbrauch derselben an dem guten Geschmack zu versiindigen.” 

12 Tbid.: “in die Fesseln der Regel.” 

13 Brief TX: “in den schweren Fesseln der Regel.”’ 

4 Uber den Dilettantismus, Weimar ed., Pt. I vol. XLVII, p. 302: “Er setzt 
_sich in die Nothwendigkeit nach falschen Regeln zu handeln, weil er ohne Regeln 
auch nicht dilettantisch bilden kann und die achten objektiven Regeln nicht kennt.” 

6 Jugendschriften, Minor ed., vol. I, p. 110. ‘Das Schéne . . . . welches 
von dem Zwange des Bediirfnisses und des Gesetzes gleich unabhingig .... ” 

16 Thid., I, 153. See note 72. 


6 THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


law and order in art. The earlier age held that only by an author’s 
obedience to critical dicta could his poetry have art; the later one 
taught that artlessness is the chief element of literary beauty. 
Herder, at one time the philosopher of the Storm and Stress 
movement, contended that lyric poetry is the antithesis of art, 
because it is all nature.!’ The new school, guided by Kant, com- 
bined their forces in attacking what they believed to be a fallacious 
conception. 


It is significant, however, that, though they derided what 
Friedrich Schlegel called the idolatry of genius im mystischen 
Orakelspriichen'® and emphasized the unphilosophical character 
of the Sturm und Drang conception of the blind and irresponsible 
genius, they did not reject the main elements of the theory of 
original genius. We shall see that the term as used by Friedrich 
Schlegel and by Schelling is not equivalent to that as used by 
Herder or by Hamann, but compounded also of elements dis- 
covered by men of the group we are now discussing. But their 
aversion to instinctive genius was general. 


Even Schiller and Goethe, in spite of earlier ties with the 
Storm and Stress group, were bitter opponents of the doctrine 
around 1800. Kant, however, was the leader of the attacking 
party. ‘Shallow heads,” he wrote in 1790, “believe they cannot 
better show themselves to be budding geniuses than by throwing 
off the constraint of all rules: they believe, in effect, that one 
could make a braver show on the back of a wild horse than on the 
back of a trained animal.’!® He implied that the original geniuses 
of his day had succeeded in producing much original nonsense,” 
and he asserted that when a choice is to be made between an 
artist without genius, or one without taste, he decidedly preferred 


17 This is the burden of Herder’s criticism of Denis’s translation of Ossian. 
Samtliche Werke, vol. V, pp. 159-207. 

18 Tugendschriften, vol. I, p. 90. 

19K. d, Ura tas Sec. 4720 [se so glauben seichte Képfe, dass sie nicht 
besser zeigen kénnen, sie wiren aufbliihende Genies, als wenn sie sich vom Schul- 
zwange aller Regeln lossagen und glauben, man paradire besser auf einem kollerich- 
ten Pferde, als auf einem Schulpferde.” 

20 Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 46: .... “dass, da es auch originalen Unsinn geben kann, 
seine [des Gentes! Producte zugleich Muster, d.i. exemplarisch sein miissen”’; 
also, Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 50: “Denn aller Reichtum der ersteren (die FAG RORRE: 
kraft) bringt in ihre gesetzlosen Freiheit nichts als Unsinn hervor...... 


! 


THE THEORY oF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 7 


the former as more cultivated and more capable of approaching 
beauty in his work.”! 


“Nature,” wrote Goethe in 1798, “is separated from art by an 
enormous chasm which genius of itself is unable to bridge without 
external assistance.”*? He praised the lawful artists at the 
expense of the lawless ones who never attain to the summit of 
art. 


To this chorus, Schiller added his voice. ‘‘Genius,” he said, 
“borders very closely on savage coarseness, . . . it is a light 
which shines readily in the midst of darkness, and which. . . 
often argues against, rather than in favor of, the taste of the 
time.” Their attitude is summed up well by Friedrich Schlegel 
when he wrote, ‘Instinct is a powerful stimulus, but a blind 
guide.’’4 


In these objections to the fundamental doctrines of the 
two leading schools of literary art in their own day, we have an 
explanation of why the Kantian group gradually discarded 
genius and accepted artist as the title by which their ideal pro- 
ducer was to be known. As they developed without reference 
to the artistic species, whether it be poetry, painting, sculpture 
or music, a concept of a work of art of which the characteristic 
element is form, the soul of the matter, or the body through 
which the soul was revealed, they likewise developed a theory of 
its creator, an artist, who is responsible for this form and who 
works to this end, not under orders from without, nor as a slave to 
a blind natural impulse, in servitude neither to authority nor to 
instinct, but in freedom and in order because he is bound only by 
laws that are self-discovered and self-imposed. 


21 Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 50: “Wenn also im Widerstreite beiderlei Eigenschaften an 
einem Producte etwas aufgeopfert werden soll, so miisste es eher auf der Seite des 
Genies geschehen; und die Urtheilskraft, welche in Sachen der schénen Kunst aus 
eigenen Principien den Ausspruch thut, wird eher der Freiheit und dem Reichtum 
der Einbildungskraft, als dem Verstande Abbruch zu thun erlauben.”’ 

2 Kinl. in die Prop., Sdmtliche Werke, Jubiliums Ausgabe, vol. XXXIII, 
p. 108: “Die Natur ist von der Kunst durch eine ungeheure Kluft getrennt, welche 
das Genie selbst, ohne dussere Hilfsmittel, zu iiberschreiten nicht vermag.”’ 

dare Re SEA dass es am nichsten an die Wildheit grenzt und ein 
Licht ist, das gern aus der Finsternis schimmert, welches also vielmehr gegen den 
Geschmack seines Zeitalters als fiir denselben zeugt.” 

4 Jugendschriften, vol. I, p. 97: “ . . . . der Trieb ist zwar ein miachtiger 

Beweger, aber ein blinder Fithrer .. . . ” 


8 THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


The basis of this theory of an artist, as one who discovers 
objective law through freedom, is found in the Kantian categories 
of Nature and Freedom with their consequent implications of 
necessity and totality, as forces making for the development of 
humanity. Man is a creature of Nature and is therefore depen- 
dent; he is also mind and therefore in search of complete inde- 
pendence. Between things as they are, the natural world about 
him, the nature within him, his senses, his passions, his human 
needs, the time and age in which he lives, the social life about 
him, all the manifold powers which mold him into being but 
which represent pressure for which he is not immediately respon- 
sible, but to which he may easily be a slave and victim: between 
all this that we call Nature, and the world of ideas,—that is, the 
sum of his desires and aspirations, since only in it can he obtain 
release from nature, detachment, and liberty,—he is swung, often- 
times longing for freedom yet bowed down by necessity, choosing 
one or the other voluntarily or involuntarily, but in so doing losing 
the totality of his being and the serenity and happiness of his 
spirit. As a bridge between the two worlds, Kant supplied the 
moral law and its Categorical Imperative; in Duty as the bond 
between Freedom and Necessity he saw the possibility of Reason 
(Vernunft) becoming efficacious in Nature. He gave a work 
of art a place between nature and mind, because to him it repre- 
sented the product of the imagination’s free conformity to the 
law of the understanding. To the artist as the one who bridges 
this gap he granted nothing. His freedom is the gift of genius 
and not an act of the will. He is merely one of Nature’s favorites, 
greatly inferior to the scientist and infinitely below the moral 
man. Nevertheless, that it is out of Kant’s categories of Nature 
and Freedom that the new theory of the artist as one who recon- 
ciles freedom and necessity arose, I hope to show. 

The theorist who was responsible for the exaltation of the 
artist, especially of what he called the aesthetic state, the essential 
prerequisite of the creation of art or of the enjoyment of it, was 
Schiller. He, too, was interested in the problems of man’s totality 
and highest efficiency or happiness, and he, too, saw the difficulty 
in reconciling worlds as antithetical as those of Nature and 
Freedom. His point of departure from Kant, however, was not 
in his estimation of the ultimate value of the moral man, but in his 
estimation of the value of the means whereby thehighest morality— 


THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 9 


or perhaps better, humanity—is attained. The Categorical Impera- 
tive is defective, humanly speaking, according to Schiller, because 
it denies the validity of sense and of feeling in the life of the 
perfected man, and so forbids his attainment of totality. Is 
there any condition, he asked in effect, where all that is natural, 
where the richness and variety of the sensible and emotional worlds 
can be united to the purity and splendor of the Ideal and One? 
Is there any condition where there is freedom from the tyrannous 
activity of the reason’s search for order and unity at the expense 
of life and feeling, and at the same time from the sense world’s 
susceptibility to chaos and disorder and destruction of form? 
Can feeling and thought, the sensible and the spiritual, the 
transitory and the eternal ever be made one? 

Schiller’s answer was both negative and affirmative. No, 
if we look seriously for the actual passing over into each other of 
the essential qualities of each sphere, for they can never exist 
together. Reconciliation which is union is unthinkable. But 
that they can be reconciled in consciousness, in the mind of man 
under certain circumstances, is the premise on which Schiller’s 
system rested. He called this condition the aesthetic state, as 
opposed, on the one hand, to the logical or moral state, and, on the 
other, to the physical state. 

Man is in the physical state when nature draws him or moves 
him. Savagery is not the only condition in which he may be the 
puppet of nature, for civilization also creates bonds which draw as 
tightly. The reformer, moved to tears and passion by the sight 
of human misery, is no freer than the epicure who finds his chief 
delight in tickling his palate. Man is in the logical or moral state, 
when he breaks with nature and discovers in thought or in choice 
the perfection of which he has dreamt. By so doing he has denied 
the appeal of the sense world, and the guidance of inclination or 
desire. To Schiller, the latter state though often necessitated in 
heroic spirits who must give example to men and lead them 
forward, is not that of true freedom because humanity’s right 
to harmony and happiness is sacrificed. 

It is only when man is in the aesthetic state that he is really 
’ free and really man. When nature has its appeal and yet does not 
dominate; when mind is active and efficacious but not destructive of 
nature, of feeling and sensation, the soul of man is not only in high 
harmony but alive with creative energy. Until feeling and thought 


10 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


exist in equilibrium as in the aesthetic state, they are not robbed 
of their capacity for constraint, or of their determinableness. 
When they are balanced, man becomes self-determinable and 
genuinely free. Only in this condition does he have autonomy, 
is he actually self-moved and free from pressure of any sort. 
Indifference is also a quality of his consciousness because he has 
reached the state where nothing is wanting and nothing is super- 
fluous. Neither desire nor disgust can affect him. Serenity and 
highest satisfaction prevail. 

But Schiller went farther than this. The theories of “‘wise 
passiveness” and ‘‘ardent listlessness’’ which were drawn later 
from similar premises held no fascination for him. To him, the 
charm of the aesthetic state was that it promoted free activity 
or play. When the will is freed from determinations, it logically 
followed, according to his reasoning, that it should seek action. 
But since man in the aesthetic state is self-barred from the world 
of nature, he cannot copy the life about him; and since he is 
self-barred from the sphere of Reason, he cannot create ideas or 
pure forms. Imitation or philosophizing are beyond his possi- 
bilities. The will so freed must find activity in a world of its own, 
one pure, distinct, and apart from all others. And this is the world 
of appearance, in which the artist, and the artist alone has sov- 
ereignty, in which he alone is creator. His imagination (die 
Einbildungskraft, i.e. the power of representing as one, an inter- 
penetrative power as Schelling afterwards remarked*) stimulated 
by the aesthetic state, self-determined by his will, freed from all 
external constraint, creates works of art, aesthetic appearances, 
in which, in semblance only, the eternal and immutable form unites 
with the richness and vitality of nature. We have already seen 
that “living form” (lebende Gestalt) was the ideal of Schiller’s 
Kunstwerk, for it is only in art, he believed, that form dominates 
without destroying life. 

Artistic autonomy, as conceived by Schiller is the result then 
of two conditions, the attainment of the aesthetic state and the 
consequent exercise of the imaginative faculty. It has been 
shown how in the aesthetic state only, the essential prerequisite 
of artistic creation, Schiller found man wholly free in that he is 


* Ph. d. K., Werke, vol. V, p. 386: ‘Das treffliche deutsche Wort Einbildungs- 
kraft bedeutet eigentlich die Kraft der Ineinsbildung, auf welcher in der That alle 
Schépfung beruht.” 


THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 11 


self-moved; it remains to indicate that he has also taught that 
within the domain of appearance, in the activity of his creative 
imagination, the artist alone is legislator and critic. At first 
sight we shall find that the situation is an anomalous one, for 
Schiller’s theory of creative imagination imposes freedom within 
limitations upon the one man whom he regarded as wholly free. 
He declared that it was one of his functions to show that that 
which the world called “limitation” was from his point of view 
“enlargement,” indicating thereby how clearly he himself realized 
the difficulty. Nevertheless, he frankly stated his thesis that 
the true artist must respect the limits which are necessarily im- 
posed upon him by the exercise of his imagination. If he tres- 
passes on the domain of nature by imitating reality or relating his 
work to it, or if he abandons the realm of appearance to enter 
that of thought, he has yielded to constraint, destroyed his free- 
dom and sacrificed the integrity and imaginative quality of his 
work. A recognition of the limits of the imagination requires that 
it accept guidance not from the senses, the feelings, the under- 
standing or the reason (Vernunft) but from itself alone. As 
for the true artist, Schiller wrote, “nothing can be sacred to 
him but his own law; the only condition imposed upon him is to 
respect the border which separates his own sphere from the 
existence of things or from the realm of Nature.’ Elsewhere he 
added that we shall deserve the reproach of not knowing true 
Beauty, i. e. “pure appearance,” so Jong as, among other reasons, 
“we do not grant to imagination an absolute legislation of its 
own.’”27 

In the main Schiller’s doctrine of artistic autonomy was 
accepted by his immediate successors, and even more definitely 
applied. There were, however, essential variations. It was 
to be expected of a philosopher such as Schelling that he would 
differ from Schiller in his estimation of the value of the aesthetic 
state and of the imagination, in spite of the fact that in its general 
outlines and in many of its details he accepted each description. 
For to him there were two approaches to the Absolute, through the 


% Brief XXVI: “Nichts darf ihm hier heilig sein als sein eigenes Gesetz, sobald 
er nur die Markung in Acht nimmt, welche sein Gebiet von dem Dasein der Dinge 
oder dem Naturgebiete scheidet.”’ 

27 Ibid: “Diesen Vorwurf werden wir solang’ verdienen.... . als wir der 
Einbildungskraft noch keine eigene absolute Gesetzgebung zugestehn.” 


12 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 


reason (Vernunft) and through the imagination. The processes 
were the reverse of each other, but the ends and the conditions— 
those of freedom within limitations—were the same. ‘‘For each 
entity we demand a particular and free life,” he wrote in the 
Philosophy of Art. “Only the understanding subordinates; in the 
reason and in the imagination everything is free and moves in the 
same atmosphere without interference and without friction. For 
everything that is independent is in turn the whole.” 


Goethe as usual saw this from the side of literary practice. In 
a conversation with Eckermann he discussed the limitations of the 
French and doubted the freedom and boldness of the Germans 
when it came to a question of the acceptance of the inherent 
differences between understanding and imagination. “I wonder 
what German critics will say?’ he asked in reference to his own 
Helena. ‘Will they have freedom and boldness enough to get over 
this? Understanding will be in the way of the French; they will 
not consider that the imagination has its own laws, to which the 
understanding cannot, and should not, penetrate.’’”° 

It is significant to notice how far these men carried Schiller’s 
doctrine of appearance. It is true that on account of a growing 
Platonism some of them, such as Goethe, especially in his mid- 
career, and Schelling, tended to emphasize art’s service to idealism 
and so made way for later advances in this direction, particularly 
for that regarding art as synonomous with concrete idealism, a 
movement which ended in a cleavage from the school of Vart 
pour art, but in general, in their emphasis upon the complete 
interpenetration of the sensible and intellectual worlds in art, they 
maintained Schiller’s influence. Schelling’s doctrine that true 
art is symbolic and not schematic or allegorical, as already ex- 


28 Ph. d. K., vol. V, p. 393: “Wir fordern fiir jedes Ding ein besonderes und 
freies Leben. Nur der Verstand ordnet unter, in der Vernunft und in der Ein- 
bildungskraft ist alles frei und bewegt sich in dem gleichen Aether, ohne sich zu 
dringen und zu reiben. Denn jedes fiir sich ist wieder das Ganze.” 

29 Gespriche, Linden, vol. I, p. 178: ‘Mich soll nur wundern . . . was die 
deutschen Kritiker dazu sagen werden; ob sie werden Freiheit und Kiihnheit genug 
haben, dariiber hinwegzukommen. Den Franzosen wird der Verstand im Wege 
sein, und sie werden nicht bedenken, dass die Phantasie ihre eigenen Gesetze hat, 
denen der Verstand nicht beikommen kann und soll.” Cf. F. Schlegel, Jugend- 
schriften, vol. I, p. 120. 


THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 13 


pounded, is a confirmation of this statement.*” Nevertheless, their 
common efforts were most largely expended on keeping art free 
from the intrusion of the real, or the vulgar, or the commonplace. 


It was indeed difficult to combat the doctrine of the Storm 
and Stress group that a work of art is but another work of nature, 
particularly because Kant had given the same characteristic to 
each of “purposiveness without purpose.” As a matter of fact, 
he had insisted that there is also a fundamental difference between 
a work of art and a work of nature: ‘‘A natural beauty is a beauti- 
ful thing ; artificial beauty is a beautiful representation of a thing.’ 
By this doctrine he had prepared the way for Schiller’s theory of 
artistic appearance, but because he had emphasized the imagina- 
tion’s relationship to concepts—richer it is true than those of logic 
—he had not completely destroyed the neo-classic belief in the 
dependence of art upon nature, nor wholly refuted the Sturm und 
Drang conception of the intimate relationship between the two. 
It was Goethe’s as well as Schiller’s function to withdraw a work of 
art completely from the realm of nature. 


*‘A work of art,’”? Goethe wrote in 1798, ‘‘can seem to be 
a work of nature only to a wholly uncultivated spectator .. . 
But, unfortunately,he can only be satisfied when the artist descends 
to his level; he will never rise with him when, prompted by his 
genius, the true artist must take wing in order to complete the 
whole circle of his work.’ And again, in his introduction to the 
Propylaea: ‘““The genuine law-giving artist strives after artistic 
truth; the lawless, following a blind instinct, after the appearance 
of naturalness. The former leads to the highest pinnacle of art, 
the latter to its lowest step.’’* ‘“‘No portrait,’’ he said elsewhere, 
“fis worth anything until the painter has literally made it a crea- 


30 Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, vol. II, No. 4, pp. 54-5. 


31 Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 48: “Eine Naturschénheit ist ein schénes Ding; die Kunst- 
schénheit ist eine schéne Vorstellung von einem Dinge.”’ 


2 Uber Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit der Kunstwerke, vol. XXXIII, 
p. 88: ‘Nur dem ganz ungebildeten Zuschauer kann ein Kunstwerk als ein Natur- 
werk erscheinen . . . . Leider aber nur so lange, als der Kiinstler sich zu ihm herab- 
lasst, wird jener zufrieden sein, niemals wird er sich mit dem echten Kiinstler 
‘erheben, wenn dieser den Flug, zu dem ihn das Genie treibt, beginnen, sein Werk 
im ganzen Umfang vollenden muss.” 


83 Hinl. in die Prop., vol. XXXII, p. 116: see previous article, p. 51. 


14 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


tion.’”** “Does it not follow,” he questioned, ‘‘that truth of nature 
and truth of art are two distinct things, and that the artist neither 
should nor may endeavor to give his work the appearance of a 
work of nature?’ Imitation of nature is possible when the 
artist is young and in the mechanical stages of his training, but 
not when his powers are ripened. Those who pursue it to the end 
are men “of quiet, true, limited nature,’’*® but in no sense true 
artists. The genuine artist, he could not repeat too often, is to be 
known by his freedom, by his power to transcend the influence 
and guidance of nature, without denying its validity in its own 
_ sphere, and without sacrificing it as the medium by which the 
imagination may become creative. 


A cardinal objection to dependence on nature was that through 
it the artist ignored reality and placed the emphasis upon the 
accidental. If the artist cannot distinguish between nature and 
art, wrote Schelling, “if it were his wish to subordinate himself 
to nature, and to repeat things present with a slavish fidelity, he 
would produce masks (Jarvae) indeed, but no works of art.’’87 
Such imitation of the externals of nature was to Goethe not only 
the destruction of art, but the acceptance of vulgarity. ‘‘The 
accidental real in which we cannot at once discover natural law or 
freedom, is called the vulgar,’’** was his ultimatum on this question. 


Again, art spurns dependence on nature, for reality as we know 
it is a matter of time; art as the daughter of Freedom knows no 
time. ‘‘Art,”’ said Schelling in his treatise on the Plastic Arts, 


4 Der Sammler und die Seinigen, Brief VI, Werke, vol. XXXII, p. 180: 
“ .... Kein Portrait kann etwas taugen, als wenn es der Maler im eigentlich- 
sten Sinne erschafft.”’ 


% Uber Wahrheit, p. 88: ‘Sollte nun nicht daraus folgen, dass das Kunstwahre 
und das Naturwahre voéllig verschieden sei, und dass der Kiinstler keinesweges 
streben sollte noch diirfe, dass sein Werk eigentlich als ein Naturwerk erscheine?”’ 


% Werke, vol. XXXIII, p. 55: “ ... . von ruhigen, treuen, eingeschrinkten 
Menschen.” 


37 Uber das Verhiltniss der bildenden Kiinste zu der Natur, Werke, vol. VII, 
p. 301: ‘“Wollte er sich aber mit Bewusstsein dem Wirklichen ganz unterordnen, 
und das Vorhandensein mit knechtischer Treue wiedergeben, so wiirde er wohl 
Larven hervorbringen, aber keine Kunstwerke.”’ 

38 Weimar ed., Pt. I. vol. XLII,? p. 119: “Das Zufallig-Wirkliche, an dem wit 
weder ein Gesetz der Natur noch der Freiheit fiir den Augenblick entdecken, nen- 
nen wir das Gemeine.” 


THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 15 


“in that it presents the object in this moment, withdraws it from 
time and causes it to display its pure being in the form ofits 
eternal life.’’*® Schiller was equally emphatic: ‘“‘Only the aesthetic 
state is a complete whole in itself, for it unites in itself all conditions 
of its source and of its duration. Here alone we feel ourselves, as it 
were, swept out of time, and our humanity expresses itself with 
purity and integrity as if it had not experienced any interruption 
by the operation of an external power.’’” 


It is because of these reasons, that the artist, as one who is 
truly free and removed from all constraint, who, though in touch 
with nature and the ideal, is undetermined by either, yet fully 
aware of the power of each, who is freely active and indifferent 
as in play, and who is consequently of no time but of all time, 
cannot devote himself to the service of his age or country. It is 
true that some of these men such as F. Schlegel and Schelling 
reconcile the age and eternity in the artist, but they do it by 
making each indifferent to the other, and not, as in imitative art, 
the former as a means to the latter’s end. 


But one and all, Schiller, Goethe (with occasional lapses), 
Schlegel and Schelling, urge the artist to beware of ends, of 
service to any cause or institution, whether it be that of science or 
of ethics, of church or of state. ‘‘Art cannot,” declared Schelling, 
“without forfeiting the nobility of its nature direct itself to any 
outward end.’ Earlier in his Philosophy of Art he had written 
“Poetry has no end outside of itself.’’4? Friedrich Schlegel in 
accordance with the advanced pluralism of his age, argued that 
wit and virtue and love, as well as art, are ends in themselves.* 


39 Uber d. V.d. b. K., vol. VII, p. 303: :““Die Kunst, indem sie das Wesen in 
jenem Augenblick darstellt, hebt es aus der Zeit heraus; sie lasst es in seinem reinen 
Sein, in der Ewigkeit seines Lebens erscheinen.”’ 

40 Brief XXII: “ . . . nur der dsthetische [Zustand] ist ein Ganzes in sich 
selbst, da er alle Bedingungen seines Ursprungs und seiner Fortdauer in sich 
vereinigt. Hier allein fiihlen wir uns wie aus der Zeit gerissen; und unsre Menschheit 
dussert sich mit einer Reinheit und Integritat, als hatte sie von der Einwirkung 
dusserer Krafte noch keinen Abbruch erfahren.”’ 

41 Uber d. V. d. b.K., vol. VII,p. 327: “ . . . . denn sie (die Kunst) kann sich, 
ohne den Adel ihrer Natur aufzugeben, nach nichts Ausserem richten.”’ 

#2 Ph. d. K., vol. V, p. 639: ‘Die Poesie hat nie einen Zweck ausser sich 

” 

43 Jugendschriften, vol. II, p. 191, Lyc. Frag. 59: “Witz ist Zweck an sich, wie 

die Tugend, die Liebe, und die Kunst.” 


16 THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


“To require moral ends of the artist is to destroy his pro- 
fession,’“ was Goethe’s answer in Dichtung und Wahrheit to what 
he believed a pernicious theory of Sulzer, which taught that the 
artist must consciously exert an ethical influence. Schiller 
justified his antagonism to the artist who tried to be a reformer, 
by urging him to beware, to examine himself “to see if these 
disorders of the moral world wound his reason, or if they do not 
rather wound his self-love.’“* He begged him as an artist, to 
forsake the world as it is, and its maxims, and to rise in freedom 
above himself to the contemplation of the eternal moral world.*? 
The cleavage between artists and the masses of men was so 
marked by the time of Friedrich Schlegel, owing largely to antag- 
onism to some of the doctrines of Fichte and Schelliny, that many 
men had come to regard art and philosophy as destroyers of 
religion and morals. In his curiously obscurantist fashion, 
Friedrich Schlegel combatted this tendency. ‘‘You wished to 
annihilate Philosophy and Poetry,” he wrote, “‘in order to make 
way for religion and morals which you did not comprehend; how- 
ever, you have been able to destroy nothing but yourself.’ 
Schiller lamented the fact that art is banished ‘‘from the noisy 
Vanity Fair of our time,’ and that “the spiritual service of art has 
no weight.’*? He ascribed this condition to men’s devotion to 
utility and to science, both of which are in the domain of the 
understanding. Only that avails, he said, which serves a purpose, 


44D. u. W., vol. XXIV, p. 112: “ . . . aber moralische Zwecke vom Kiinstler 
fordern, heisst hc sein Handwerk verderben.” 

45 cf. A. W. Schlegel, in F. Schlegel’s J ugendschriften, vol. II, Ath. Frag. 106: 
“Die moralische Wiirdigung ist der dsthetischen vollig entgegengesetzt. Dort gilt 
der gute Wille alles, hier gar nichts. Der gute Wille witzig zu sein, zum Beispiel, 
ist die Tugend eines Pagliass.” 

46 Brief IX: ‘Aber befragte er sich auch, ob diese Unordnungen in der moral- 
ischen Welt seine Vernunft beleidigen oder nicht vielmehr seine Selbstliebe schmer- 
zen?” 

47 Brief IX. 

48 Tugendschriften, vol. II, Ideen, No. 90: “Du wolltest die Philosophie zer- 
stéren, und die Poesie, um Raum zu gewinnen fiir die Religion und Moral, die du 
verkanntest; aber du hast nichts zerstéren kénnen als dich selber.” The interpre- 
tation of this passage will be clearer after we have discussed Schlegel’s doctrine of 
originality. 

49 Brief II: “Auf dieser groben Wage hat das geistige Verdienst der Kunst 
kein Gewicht, und, aller Aufmunterung beraubt, verschwindet sie von dem lar- 
menden Markt des Jahrhunderts.” 


THE THEORY oF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 17 


or which can be understood in its relation to actuality. The im- 
agination is robbed, he added, ‘“‘of one province after another 
and the frontiers of art are narrowed in proportion as the limits of 
science are enlarged.’’®° 


It is significant also, and an aid to our understanding of this 
time’s concept of an artist and to our appreciation of the con- 
sistency in the main of their views, to see that in addition to 
excluding service to causes or institutions, they definitely ruled 
out the stimulation of the emotions, and the excitation of pleasure 
in the percipient. Delight as an objective rather than as a result, 
is destructive of art according to Friedrich Schlegel. ‘‘Enjoyment 
must be free,” he wrote, ‘“‘it may never be a means to an end. 
Intentional delight would be business, and not pleasure.’ In his 
criticism of the French Romanticists, Goethe deplored the ten- 
dency of some to seek emotional effects, because thereby they 
degraded their talent and destroyed their capacity for creating art. 
“But in this chase after outward means of effect,’ he wrote, “all 
profound study, and all gradual and thorough development of the 
talent and the Man from within, is entirely neglected. And this'is 
the greatest injury which can befall a talent.’ Schiller went so far 
as to place consciously impassioned or pathetic art (the tragic) 
on the same plane as didactic or improving art. ‘‘There is,’’ he 
said, “a fine art of passion, but an impassioned fine art is a con- 
tradiction in terms. . . . The idea of an instructive fine art 
(didactic art) or improving (moral) art is no less contradictory, for 
nothing agrees less with the idea of the beautiful than to give 
a determinate tendency to the mind.’ In the last clause we have 


60 Brief II: ‘“Selbst der philosophische Untersuchungsgeist entreisst der Ein 
bildungskraft eine Provinz nath der andern, und die Grenzen der Kunst verengen 
sich, je mehr die A ihre Schranken erweitert.”’ 

51 Jugendschriften, vol. I, p. 23: “Er [der Genuss] muss frei, darf nicht Mittel 
zu einem Zwecke sein. Absichtlicher Genuss wire Geschdft und nicht Genuss.” 

8 Gespr., vol. III, p. 151: “In diesem Jagen nach dusseren Effektmitteln aber 
wird jedes tiefere Studium und jedes stufenweise griindliche Entwickeln des Talents 
und Menschen von innen heraus ganz ausser Acht gelassen. Das ist aber der 
grésste Schaden, der dem Talent begegnen kann.” 

58 Brief XXII: ‘Eine schéne Kunst der Leidenschaft gibt es; aber eine schéne 
leidenschaftliche Kunst ist ein Widerspruch....... Nicht weniger wider- 
sprechend ist der Begriff einer schénen lehrenden (didaktischen) oder bessernden 
(moralischen) Kunst, denn nichts streitet mehr mit dem Begriff der Schénheit, als 
dem Gemiit eine bestimmte Tendenz zu geben.” 


18 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


the key note to the conception of artistic autonomy as it is derived 
from Schiller. If the artist ‘seeks to give a determinate tendency 
to the mind” he unconsciously confesses that he has crossed the 
boundaries of the imagination’s domain. When his effort is ex- 
pended on an attempt to impose his feelings or his reason upon the 
world of reality, he is not free from constraint, he is not indifferent 
and creating in the spirit of play, and what he makes is not an 
appearance where life and form are in semblance one. Only the 
understanding recognizes purposes; to the reason and imagination, 
as superior faculties, they have no existence. By refusing to re- 
main within his own sphere, he has both failed to create a work 
of art, and has not succeeded in being a good moralist or statesman. 

Schiller’s doctrine of artistic autonomy rests, it may be seen, 
on three principles: that only in the aesthetic state is there true 
human autonomy, actual freedom of choice and action; that the 
creative imagination is the faculty of the soul through which this 
freedom finds expression; and that the imagination is sovereign 
within its own domain and recognizes no laws save those which 
it makes to preserve its purity, its integrity, and its detachment 
from the spheres of sense, emotions, understanding and reason. 
In general, it must be clear, the doctrine for which he was sponsor 
is that of the autonomy of the creative imagination in abstracto,; 
the artist is free, not because he is himself, but because he exercises 
a faculty which can create only under the condition of freedom. 
Schiller was so convinced of the need of purity and serenity in 
art that he urged, more commonly than was logically advisable, 
the elimination of differentiating characteristics. He would 
free art as far as possible from the limitations imposed by its 
division into genera and species. When “‘the different arts come 
to resemble each other more and more in the action which they 
exercise on the mind,’ they have risen, he believed, to a higher 
elevation than is possible by keeping them within the limits of a 
particular type. He also advised the artist to transcend other 
limits, ‘‘to triumph over those which are inherent in the particular 
subject of which he treats.’’** The artist, he added, must forego 


4 Brief XXII: “ .... dass... die verschiedenen Kiinste in ihrer Wirkung 
auf das Gemiit einander immer dhnlicher werden.” 
8 Brief XXII: “ ... . auch diejenigen [Schranken], welche dem besondern 


Stoffe, den er bearbeitet, anhangig sind, muss der Kiinstler durch die Behandlung 
iiberwinden.” 


THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 19 


his individuality as he approaches the higher state of personality, 
his finite character as he approaches infinity and form.*® He 
went further, it seems, than any of his contemporaries in his 
attempt to remove the artist from all limitations except those 
inherent in the play of his creative imagination. Because of this, 
he came to be regarded by those who survived him as so rigid and 
abstract in his teachings that he would destroy life in art at the 
expense of form. 


In 1794, one year before Schiller published his Uber die ds- 
thetische Erziehung des Menschen, Fichte had brought out his 
Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre in which he expounded 
his doctrine of the Ego and Non-Ego. That Schiller knew this 
work is very evident from the Letters, in which he regarded the 
reconciliation in consciousness of the Ego and the Non-Ego as one 
of the characteristics of the aesthetic state. But it is equally 
apparent that it failed to give him any interest in a possible theory 
of the autonomy of the artist as an individual. That addition to 
the connotation of the term came as Fichte’s influence increased, 
and as his contemporaries, Schelling and Friedrich Schlegel, 
developed an enriched conception of the artist. 


Fichte’s doctrine of the Ego, although not always consistently 
interpreted by him, in the main asserted that each human being 
as a unique complex is capable of approaching the Infinite Idea, 
if he voluntarily frees himself from such encroachments of Nature 
—or the Non-Ego*’—as interfere with his development, and if, 
thus self-limited and self-directed, he surrenders himself to 
necessity in so far as it is the means by which he will attain 
freedom and self-realization. At the beginning of his conscious 
life, man is moved by his native instincts, by the blind leadings 
of his spiritual nature, but finds himself thwarted by that which 
is not himself, or of himself, his Non-Ego. As he progresses, he 
also becomes aware that it is in following these leadings that he is 
losing his freedom. Only when he has recognized the constraint 
of his instinct as constraint and has accepted it as a guide, does he 
become equal to the task of creating himself. Directed by it, he 
can gather into his personality as much of the richness and the 


6 Briefe XI—XII. 
87 Fichte did not consistently follow this definition of the Non-Ego. This 
exposition is largely based on Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800). 


20 Tue TuHeory oF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 


variety of the world beyond as suits his needs, and, at the same 
time retain and develop that unity which is himself. With instinct 
robbed of its sjave compelling power, and the Non-Ego deprived 
of its capacity to hinder and viewed rather as an instrument of 
self-creation, he has made himself free within his accepted limi- 
tations. Instead of being a work of Nature, he is distinctly a 
creator of his own self-sufficiency.®® Fichte, like Schiller, who 
may have been his disciple in this connection, often opposed 
individuality and personality to each other. The former he 
regarded as the distinguishing quality of man ina state of necessity, 
the latter that of man in a state of freedom. In either condition, 
a man is peculiar, but he is a nobly self-sufficient, truly autono- 
mous, integrally valid being only when he is consciously self- 
directed and has, by voluntary surrender to the obstacles opposed 
to him, freed himself from the domination of instinct and external 
nature. He has lost himself only to gain himself. 


Fichte’s view of history as a progressive revelation of the 
absolute through a series of unique personalities is also important 
in this connection. Not only did it justify and emphasize differ- 
ences, in great men and artists who had come before, and in 
periods of history or of art, but it also gave to the future a doctrine 
which stimulated men’s confidence in their peculiarities and 
in their capacity for unique contributions to art or philosophy. 
Its influence as a stimulus to production in the nineteenth century 
school of art for art’s sake is comparable only to its influence in the 
reinterpretation of artistic and political history. 

The channels through which the doctrines of Fichte reached 
the artists immediately were in the main the aesthetic writings 
of Schelling and Friedrich Schlegel. There were many others 
who assisted, but since this study is definitely limited to a few 
striking figures who sum up the thought of the time, only one 
other, Goethe, will be considered. One of the immediate results 
of the Fichtean teaching was a new theory of original genius. 
To distinguish this from the Storm and Stress conception, we must 
notice that, though instinct was still regarded as un unaccountable 


68 Die Bestimmung des Menschen, Sémtliche Werke, vol. II, p. 256: “Ich bin - 
durchaus mein eigenes Geschépf. Ich hatte blind dem Zuge meiner geistigen Natur 
folgen kénnen. Ich wollte nicht Natur, sondern mein eigenes Werk sein; und ich 
bin es geworden, dadurch dass ich es wollte.” 


THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 21 


gift of nature, it was held to be artistically inoperative until 
consciously realized and accepted as a guide. An artist who 
follows it blindly deprives himself of the power to create in free- 
dom, and'ranges himself with instinctive creatures such as animals 
instead of lifting himself to the heights possible to humanity.°® 
If he accepts it as a guide, by a free act of the mind he has destroyed 
his slavery to it and made it his servant and the instrument by 
which he may approach to his unique vision—or apprehension of 
the Absolute.® . 


More than Schlegel, Schelling emphasized the divine origin of 
genius. “It is, as it were, a fragment of Divinity.’ Conse- 
quently, he belittled the war with destiny, the struggle to attain 
personality which Schlegel believed so essential to the highest 
achievement of man, especially of the artist. At times, in spite 
of marked differences, Schlegel came close to Schiller in his belief 
that the artist rather than the philosopher is distinctly a creation 
of the conditions in which man as man finds himself, and is there- 
fore, necessarily, the one who has attained humanity’s climax. 
The effect of Schelling’s attitude was to make men think of the 
artist as inspired and divinely aided; that of Schlegel’s to make 
them think of him as the concrete ideal human being, vastly 
superior to the ordinary man, yet man and not spirit, and as one 
who has not only conquered necessity but also learned to despise 
men who submit. Enjoyment of his self-sufficiency, contempt 
for vulgar inadequacy and cowardice, these were inherent qualities 
in Schlegel’s conception of the artist. The divorce between him 
and humanity, so often noticed in the school of lV’art pour Vart, 
though not philosophically essential to its theory, has, I hope it is 
clear, in part at least, a philosophical origin. 


To these men the prime requisite of a true artist, was origin- 
ality. Schelling spoke of the creative faculty as the “power of 
individuation.’’* ‘Art is a wholly peculiar activity of the human 


59 F’. Schlegel, Jugendschriften, vol. I, p. 97. 

60 Tbid., vol. I, p. 119. 

61 Ph. d. K., vol. V, p. 460: “Es [das Genie] ist so zu sagen ein Stiick aus der 
Absolutheit Gottes.”’ 

* € Tugendschriften, vol. I, pp. 95-7. Cf. Goethe, Gespr., vol. I, p. 77. ‘ 

8 e.g.: Jugendschriften, vol. II, Lyc. Frag. 87 and 108. 

64 Ph. d. K., vol. V, p. 386: “Sie (die Einbildungskraft) ist .. . . die Kraft der 
Individuation.” 


22 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 


spirit,’ wrote Schlegel, “which is separated by fixed boundaries 
from every other manifestation of this spirit.”®° They are always 
careful, however, to distinguish originality, which they greatly 
admire, from individuality or singularity (Partikularitat) and 
subjectivity (Subjektivitét), which they contemn. What they 
asked for in art is not the partial vision, which may be confused or 
one-sided, but the vision of the whole even though it is appre- 
hended from a very limited point of view. It is imperative that 
every one see from his own Standpunkt, Schlegel argued,—there 
can be no artist who sums up all of art;® but to attain this end it is 
equally imperative that an artist should not be content with his 
natural endowment which makes him individual, but that he 
should rise from his incomplete and inchoate state to that of 
perfect self-realization. When he remains as nature made him, 
he never attains even to an apprehension of the Absolute except 
in fleeting glimpses which give him no perception of it as it is. 
He is never free until he has a view of his world as a whole, until 
he can see it objectively and apart from himself. Subjectivity is 
the mark of his being conditioned by nature; objectivity is the 
result of his freedom and self-creativeness.™” 

The law of a work of art, Schelling declared, is that “the more 
original it is, the more universal it is.’”’®* Because they were often 
confused Schlegel found it necessary to distinguish this aesthetic 
universality from logical universality, ‘‘unconditioned imperative 
universal validity.’’®® In artistic representation the ideal appears 
through the medium of a concrete and tangible image or series of 
images, which can never be regarded as essential to all representa- 
tions of the ideal or the universal similarly viewed. When logical 
universality is demanded, this concrete medium is effaced, or so 
robbed of its peculiar features that it loses its distinctness and 
charm and remains nothing more than a logical concept, a dim 
image of the average in no way suggesting the ideal. Beautiful 


6 Jugendschriften, vol. I, p. 119: “Die Kunst ist eine ganz eigenthtimliche 
Thitigkeit des menschlichen Gemiiths, welche durch ewige Granzen von jeder 
andern geschieden ist.” 

6 Jbid., vol. Il, Id. 114. 

67 F, Schlegel, Jugendschriften, vol. I, p. 102: vol. II, Ath. Frag. 297. 

68 Ph, d. K., vol. V, p. 447: “ ... . dass gerade je origineller, desto univer- 
seller.” 

69 Jugendschriften, vol. I, p. 153. 


THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 23 


art, he urged, is like the speech of God, spiritually one, but diverse 
in dialects when used by men to communicate the eternal ideas 
to each other.”? The artist presents his vision in his own way, 
asking of his medium only what man asks of language: that it 
impart truly and beautifully that which he desires to say. 


To Schlegel, particularly, a school of artists is inconceivable. 
There are, he said, Echo-Kiinstler in countless legions who imi- 
tate the external peculiarities of a great artist, but they can never 
become original geniuses themselves.” The true artist can neither 
rule nor serve. It follows then quite logically that, to these men, 
the law governing artistic creation comes not from without the 
artist, nor from others, but from himself. Schlegel would have 
the artist obey the ‘‘necessary laws of beauty and the objective 
rules of art,’’”* which are, in general, no other than those laid down 
by Kant and particularly by Schiller regarding the exercise of 
creative imagination. These, as we have seen, proceed from the 
artist’s recognition of his autonomy within his own sphere. They 
are the bonds which unite all artists in a commonactivity, and 
they represent, in a sense, voluntary compacts made by those 
who are governed by the same aspiration. But the doctrine of 
artistic originality demands an autonomy which is beyond even 
the voluntary compact and which is referred only to the individual 
as an individual. In the ultimate analysis, Schelling and Schlegel 
as well as Fichte believed, no artist can go beyond himself, beyond 
his own Willkiir or freedom of choice. Romantic poetry which 
Schlegel identifies with all great poetry is, he said, ‘alone infinite 
and truly free,” for “it recognizes as its first condition that the 
pleasure of the poet endures no law above itself.’ “Art and 
science,” wrote Schelling in his treatise On the Relation of the 
Plastic Arts to Nature, ‘can only revolve on their own axes. The 
artist like every intellectual operator, can only follow that law 


70 Tbid. 
1 Jugendschrifien, vol. I, p. 102. Cf. vol. II, Ideen 45 and 114. 


% Ibid., vol. I, p. 153. “Der Kiinstler braucht gar nicht allen alles zu sein. 
Wenn er nur den nothwendigen Gesetzen der Schénheit und den objektiven Regeln 
der Kunst gehorcht, so hat er iibrigens unbeschrinkte Freiheit, so eigenthiimlich 
zu sein, als er nur immer will.” 

73 Jugendchriften, vol. II, Ath. Frag. 116: ‘Sie allein ist unendlich, wie sie 
allein frei ist, und das als ihr erstes Gesetz anerkennt, dass die Willkiir des Dichters 
kein Gesetz iiber sich leide.”’ 


24 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


which God and nature have written in his heart—no other.’’” 
The conclusion was inevitable: when conscious originality is made 
the essential quality of fine art, there is no law—except those 
demanded by the exercise of imagination—but that which is the 
product of the artist’s own intelligence and pleasure. 


Benjamin Constant in his Journal Intime reported a conversa- 
tion with Goethe in 1804 which has interest to us in this connec- 
tion. They were discussing The Sorrows of the Young Werther 
and its influence on the public. Constant quoted Goethe as having 
said, ‘“But when I write something which pleases me, I care nothing 
about its consequences.’ In a parallel passage in Goethe’s 
Annalen for 1804 referring, it seems, to this and similar conversa- 
tions, the German remarked of the Frenchman ‘‘my peculiar way 
of regarding and treating nature and art was not always clear to 
him.’”’”® There is good reason to believe that Goethe may have 
said something more like this: ‘But when I write something 
which pleases me, I cannot be responsible for its influence on 
uncultivated readers.”’ That, at least, is in keeping with much 
that he had ‘written. For there can be no doubt that he was greatly 
influenced by the new doctrine of originality. 


As a philosophical extension and justification of his earlier criti- 
cal theory of the characteristic in art, which he attacked in 
mid-life,”” it enabled him in his old age to give new significance to 
his enduring interest in personality in art. ‘The true artist,” 
he asserted, ‘“‘rests firmly and securely upon himself.”’® Like 
his contemporaries, he recognized genius, the unaccountable 
element in an artist’s inspiration, but he never even in his old 


74 Werke, vol. III, p. 327: ‘Kunst und Wissenschaft kénnen beide sich nur um 
ihre eigne Axe bewegen; der Kiinstler wie jeder geistig Wirkende nur dem Gesetz 
folgen, das ihm Gott und Natur ins Herz geschrieben, keinem andern.” 

7% Journal Intime, le 26 pluviose: “En parlant de Werther il [Goethe] disait: 
“Ce qui rend cet ouvrage dangereux, c’est d’avoir peint de la faiblesse comme de la 
force. Mais quand je fais une chose me convient, les consequences ne me regardent 
pas. S’il y a des fous, a qui la lecture en tourne mal, ma foi tant pis! ’ ” 

76 Paralipomena zu den Annalen, Zum Jahre 1804, Werke, vol. XXX, pp. 399-400: 
“Mit Benjamin Constant wurden mir gleichfalls angenehme belehrende Stunden. 

. wenn ihm auch meine Art und Weise, Natur und Kunst anzusehen und zu 
behandeln, nicht immer deutlich werden konnte .... ” 

77 e.g.: Der Sammler und die Seinigen, Brief VI, 1799. Werke, vol. XXXIIT. 

78 Weimar ed. Pt. I, vol. XLVI, p. 320: “(Der wahre Kiinstler steht fest und 
sicher auf sich selbst.” 


{ 


t 
THE THEORY or “ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 25 


age regarded it as the sole element in creation. At the height of 
his career and afterward, art was distinctly the product of freedom 
in the Fichtean sense, of a noble self-consciousness that had 
learned to trust the unconscious element in the creative process. 
“‘Personality,” he told Eckermann, ‘“‘is everything in art and 
poetry.” As is well known, he objected to one-sidedness in 
literary men and held that many-sidedness, complete self-mani- 
festation, is the goal of all true artists regarded as men.®? 

He urged those who sought his advice to cultivate their peculiar 
nature, but he warned them that they will succeed in doing so 
only while they seem to be going out of themselves... . 
Not alone by following the lead of native instinct was personality 
to be developed; but also by drawing to one’s self all that nature, 
art and humanity had to offer in the way of cultivation. He agreed 
with Fichte in holding that the true artist and man must free 
himself from the pettiness and narrowness implicit in singularity. 
Consequently, he also came to despise subjectivity and to regard it, 
not, as Schiller had, asa different way of treating artistic material, 
but as a sign of inferiority, of artistic incapacity. ‘‘A poet,’ he 
argued, “‘deserves not the name while he expresses nothing but 
his few subjective emotions. Only when he can appropriate to 
himself, and express the world, is he a poet. Then he is inex- 
haustible, and can be always new. The subjective nature, on the 
contrary, soon exhausts its meagre inspiration, and is at last 
ruined by mannerism.’’®? Purification of personality, enrichment 
of it until all its latent possibilities are in flower, these are the 
demands which the creative capacity makes of the budding 
artist. 

To Goethe this fullness and richness as well as freedom of 
personality, was a desirable end in itself. It removed him from 


79 Gespr. vol. II, p. 128: ‘‘Allerdings ist in der Kunst und Poesie die Persién- 
lichkeit alles.” 

80 e.g, Hinl. in die Prop., vol. XX XIII, pp. 119-122. 

81 [bid., p. 122: “Jeder wird seine eigne Natur nur desto mehr ausbilden, je 
mehr er sich von ihr zu entfernen scheint.” 

& Gespr., vol. I, pp. 117-8: “‘Ebenso ist es mit einem Dichter. Solange er bloss 
seine wenigen subjektiven Empfindungen ausspricht, ist er noch keiner zu nennen; 
aber sobald er die Welt sich anzueignen und auszusprechen weiss, ist er ein Poet. 
Und dann ist er unerschépflich und kann immer neu sein, wogegen aber eine sub- 
jektive Natur ihr Bisschen Inneres bald ausgesprochen hat und zuletzt in Manier zu 
Grunde geht.” 


26 THE THEORY OF ‘“‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 


the slavery of temperament and from the irritations of his environ-: 
ment. It destroyed his tendency to subjectivity and increased 
his freedom and objectivity in imaginative creation. Thereby, 
he could, like a calm god, look down upon the world of his Kumnst- 
werk as one on the outside and not mixed up in it. Like a god 
he could laugh at it, or be saddened by it, as suited his mood. 
Goethe seldom if ever claimed-this privilege for himself, but he 
greatly admired it in others,—Merimée* and Goldsmith* and 
Méser,® for example. He and others called this quality Irony. 
It was in the main expounded by Friedrich Schlegel.. It was the 
natural product of Schiller’s theory of the naive and the sentimen- 
tal, of the growing tendency to think of the artist as one who 
plays indifferently between the actual and the ideal; it needed only 
the Schlegelian doctrine of originality to give it birth. 

Through it nineteenth century art, particularly that which is 
the product of the art for art’s sake school, received one of its 
richest sources of inspiration. For it gave philosophical counten- 
ance to a belief that art bears an intimate relation to its artist’s 
moods or reactions without reference to their permanent validity. 
In Schlegel’s emphasis on the need of the artist being above his 
creation, outside of it, self-controlled, self-restrained and yet 
active, regarding it as an independent and self-subsiste nt whole, 
and from that point of view, being able to change his apergu or 
his mood as his pleasure moves, we have the explanation of much 
that confuses and irritates lovers of older art who find little to 
enjoy in modern literature.* 

The capriciousness of Schlegel’s ironical artist has been often 
noted and much misunderstood. What he admired in the true 
artist was first originality and then irony, the latter only as a 
concomitant to the essential first element. He gave the original 
artist alone the privilege of freedom to enjoy his imaginative 
conception to the utmost, and from any point of view. Since he 
sees his creation as a whole, he has the right to view it as such and 
to be variously affected by its manifold qualities. In one of his 
epigrams, Schlegel said that a work which has not as living a 
reality and as distinct a personality as a beloved or a friend had 


83 Gespr., vol. III, p. 152. 

4 D.u.W., Werke, vol. XXIII, pp. 258-9. 

% Tbid., vol. XXIV, p. 182. : 

% F, Schlegel, Jugendschriften, vol. IL, Lyc. Frag. 42, 55, 108; Ath. Frag. 297. 


THE THEORY OF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 27 


better remain unwritten, for otherwise it can never become a work 
of art.8’ As it is the privilege of the lover to regard his beloved 
from all angles, to be affected by her eternal variety and many 
charms, and even, if he is free from constraint, to look at her. 
humorously, so it is the privilege of the artist to view his creation 
from every side, enjoying it and all its reactions, taking it with 
extreme seriousness or in puckish spirit as his mood urges, because 
he sees it as it is, and regards it as a whole. In the last analysis, 
this is but an added reward of his detachment and freedom. It is 
evident that Schlegel did not admire the serene indifference which 
appealed to Schiller and Schelling as much as he did the perfect 
relaxation, the ungoverned play of the spirit which freedom in 
creation gave the artist. The ideal of Schiller and Schelling is 
incapable of dogmatism because in his calm unconcern he can 
take no sides: that of Schlegel is equally undidactic because his 
ironical mood not only increases his indifference but makes a 
consistent and eternally valid reaction impossible.** 

So far, in this discussion of the theories of artistic autonomy, 
nothing has been said regarding freedom in execution. At. first 
sight, Kant seems to deprive the artist of autonomy in actual 
representation. Genius, he contended, gives only the material 
of art; execution requires taste, that is, the talent for beautiful 
representation that is cultivated in the schools. He advised the 
young genius to avail himself of the experience of the past, to know 
the rules, to acquire mechanical skill in execution.*® 

Although it must be frankly admitted that Kant often ranged 
himself with the formalists, it is clear that such allegiance was not 
within his final intention. His temporary alignment with the 
neo-classicists was actually, I believe, the product of his tempera- 
mental dislike of the Storm and Stress men and of their Icarian 
failures. For Kant, idealist as he was, was intensely practical, 


87 Jugendschriften, vol. II, Ath. Frag. 117: ‘“‘Werke, deren Ideal fiir den Kiinst- 
ler nicht eben so viel lebendige Realitait, und gleichsam Persénlichkeit hat, wie die 
Geliebte oder der Freund, blieben besser ungeschrieben. Wenigstens Kunstwerke 
werden es gewiss nicht.” 

88 Jugendschriften, vol. II, Lyc. Frag. 108: “ . . . . Sie [die Sokratische Ironie] 
soll Niemanden tiuschen, als die, welche sie fiir Tauschung halten, und entweder 
ihre Freude haben, an der herrlichen Schalkheit, alle Welt zum Besten zu haben, 
oder bése werden, wenn sie ahnden, sie waren wohl auch mit gemeint. In ihr soll 
alles Scherz, und alles Ernst sein, alles treuherzig offen, und alles tief verstellt.”’ 

89 Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 47 (entire). 


28 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


and sought conditions where great results were humanly possible. 
The condition of human success was to him invariably the recon- 
ciliation of freedom and necessity, the voluntary acceptance of the 
intellect’s law in the domain of nature. Consequently a work of 
art must be the product of the free acceptance of limitation. 
Limitation in artistic representation, as opposed to artistic 
conception, meant to him the recognition of conditions imposed 
upon the artist by the need of objectively presenting his imagina- 
tive vision. Now to Kant, the ultimate condition of all repre- 
sentation was that the artist should seek to render his form ‘“‘ade- 
quate to his thought without detriment to the free play of his 
powers.”’°® This does not require that he reject the assistance 
which manifold examples from art and nature can give him; it 
does mean, however, that the final authority in execution is him- 
self. He only can judge whether the form is adequate to his 
thought or not. ‘‘To content himself, he finds that form which 
satisfies himself.’’*! There is no doubt that in Kant’s estimation, 
there is only one final court of appeal, and that that is the artist’s 
own conscience. 


Sometimes, he said, a young and inexperienced author may 
accept the judgment of others when it is in opposition to his own 
taste, because he desires applause; but when he matures, and his 
own judgment is sharpened by exercise, he must, if he be a true 
artist, follow his own conscience alone and ignore the taste of 
others. ‘‘Taste merely claims autonomy; to make the judgments 
of others the determining grounds of his own would be heteron- 
omy.’’” 

But Kant went even further than this. He not only erected 
in the artistic conscience the final court of appeal, but he gave 
the individual choices of the artist in execution (that is, in the 


% Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 48: “ . ... um sie dem Gedanken angemessen und doch 
der Freiheit im Spiele derselben nicht nachtheilig werden zu lassen.” 

% Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 48: “Diese Form aber dem Producte der schénen Kunst zu 
geben, dazu wird blos Geschmack erfordert, an welchem der Kiinstler, nachdem er 
ihn durch mancherlei Beispiele der Kunst oder der Natur geiibt und berichtigt hat, 
sein Werk halt, und nach manchen oft miihsamen Versuchen, denselben zu be- 
friedigen, diejenige Form findet, die ihm Geniige thut.”’ ; 

% Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 32: ‘“Der Geschmack macht blos auf Autonomie Anspruch. 
Fremde Urtheile sich zum Bestimmungsgrunde des seinigen zu machen, ware 
Heteronomie.” 


THE THEORY OF ‘‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 29 


exercise of taste) the sanction of a Categorical Imperative. Possi- 
bly in no other connection has he so dignified and exalted the artis- 
tic capacity. ‘‘All judgments of taste,” he said, ‘‘are singular 
judgments,’ but “the agreement of a representation with these 
conditions must be capable of being assumed as valid a priori 
for everyone.’ 


With the development of the theories of artistic autonomy and 
with the granting to the artist of prerogatives and of freedom 
beyond those of other men (save the philosopher among the 
Fichteans), Kant’s dicta regarding the artistic conscience and 
its Categorical Imperative needed no argument. The energy of 
the later men was expended on the consideration of the qualities 
which are to be demanded in every true Kunstwerk, and to gaining 
and preserving which, every creating artist must devote himself. 
All agreed that Vollkommenheit, consummateness or perfection, 
in an aesthetical and not in a logical sense, was the ultimate goal 
in execution. We all know the passion for this quality in the 
work of the average /’art pour l'art man in the second half of the 
nineteenth century; we can find a parallel fervor and enthusiasm 
in Germany around 1800. Greek art was ardently admired be- 
cause it excelled in this particular. ‘‘Perfection,’’ however, is a 
vague quality which varies in significance from age to age. What 
were its differentia at this time? They are marked with a fair 
degree of ease because they were the necessary result of their 
belief that art is the product of the creative imagination—always, 
of course, in the sense already defined—and of the unique vision. 
The first demand on the artist in execution is that he maintain 
aesthetic appearance, that, on the one hand, his work be free from 
the intrusions of the real as real, and that, on the other hand, 
it be freed from the domination of the intellect and not sacrificed 
to the requirements of thought. In other words, a work of art, 
to satisfy its artist, must have purity, which is freedom from 
anything that is foreign to its essential nature, and it must have 
integrity, a completeness within its own limitations, that makes it 


% Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 37: ‘Daher sind auch alle Geschmacksurtheile einzelne 
Urtheile..... ie 

“% Kr. d. Ur., Sec. 38: “ ... . so muss die Ubereinstimmung einer Vorstel- 
lung mit diesen Bedingungen der Urfheilskraft als fiir Jedermann giiltig @ priori 
angenommen werden kénnen.” 

%e.g. F. Schlegel, Jugendschriften, vol. I, p. 22. 


30 THE THEORY OF ‘‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


independent and self-subsistent. The second demand, realized 
as we have seen by men who came after Schiller, was that the 
artist make his work the product of his personal vision; in other 
words that it have originality or peculiarity. Purity, integrity, 
peculiarity, these were the tests and, in general, the only tests 
which the spirit of art for art’s sake criticism in the period we are 
discussing, and in the later and better known one, permitted 
friend or foe toapply. The earlier men, with the possible exception 
of Goethe, were not so concerned with their application by critics 
as they were by the artist himself, who, obviously, was the only 
one in their estimation who could finally determine whether his 
Kunstwerk was pure, whole and peculiar. 


That his task, the attainment of aesthetic perfection, was not 
an easy one, was universally admitted. Kant opposed the Storm 
and Stress men in this particular of the controversy. ‘This form 
is not, as it were, a thing of inspiration, or the result of a free swing 
of the mental powers, but of a slow and even painful process of 
improvement,’ he argued. Although Goethe believed that the 
appearance of ease was desirable in art, he taught that it was not 
in any sense to be gained by facility in expression. ‘“‘All tendency 
to easy contentment destroys art,’’®? he wrote in notes for a paper 
on Dilettantism, a habit of mind that he despised because it 
‘“‘brings in indulgence and favor.’’ He also complained that “at 
the expense of true artists it brings into notice those that stand 
nearest to Dilettantism.’’ In his Introduction to the Propylaea he 
exerted his influence to show that where facility is honored, and 
the details and principles of execution are ignored, true art wanes. 
To him quite consistently after his divorce from Sturm und Drang, 
the noblest talent found, as he said, “‘its highest satisfaction in the 
execution.’’®® 


“The excellence of a work of art,’’ wrote Schiller, ‘‘can only 
consist in its greater approximation to its ideal of aesthetic 


% Ky. d. Ur., Sec. 48: ‘.. .. daher diese nicht gleichsam eine Sache der 
Eingebung oder eines freien Schwunges der Gemiitskrafte, sondern einer langsamen 
und gar peinlichen Nachbesserung ist . . . ” 

7 Weimar ed., Pt. I, vol. XLVII, p. 302: “Alles Vorliebnehmen zerstért die 
Kunst und der Dilettantismus fiihrt Nachsicht und Gunst ein.” 

% Gespr., vol. I, p. 66: “Das echte, wahrhaft grosse Talent aber findet sein 
héchstes Gliick in der Ausfiihrung.”’ 


THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE” 31. 


purity.”’°® The great.author, according to Fichte, ‘‘does not think 
he has attained anything until he has attained all,—until his 
work stands before him in the purity and perfection towards which 
he has struggled ..... so long as he is not conscious of this 
absolute freedom and purity [peculiarity] he has not attained his 
object, but still works on.’’!°° Both of them, it will be seen, iden- 
tified artistic consummateness and purity, but Schiller thought of 
purity as the product of attention to and concentration on aesthetic 
appearance: Fichte, as the result of the laborious effort on the 
part of an author to free his work from the alien qualities of his 
lower self! and from the alien elements of another’s personal- 
ity. But both are one in their belief that elimination is one of 
the chief requisites in artistic execution. 

It is interesting to notice, as a result, just one of the specific 
tests which these men applied to their own work and to that of 
others. I shall mention only their demand for self-restraint 
(self-sacrifice) in art. To say everything about a subject is im- 
possible to the original artist, in the theory of Friedrich Schlegel. 
Limitation is essential. But limitation is possible only where 
man has capacity for limitless expansion,—that is, either in the. 
length or in the breadth of his vision, ‘‘in den Punkten und an den 
Seiten.”’ He can so distribute his interests that he destroys his 
capacity for self-realization, the basis of art; or he can so con- 
centrate them that, by his very sacrifice, he gains a vista into the 
Absolute, a-vision that is his own and no other’s.!% Self-control, 
self-limitation, is the very condition of artistic perfection. ‘A 
work is finished [perfected],’’ he wrote, ‘“‘when it is limited at every 
point, yet within its borders is without limitation and inex- 


9 Brief XXII: “ .... so kann die Vortrefflichkeit eines Kunstwerks bloss 
in seiner gréssern Annaherung zu jenem Ideale dsthetischer Reinigkeit bestehen .. .” 

100 Uber das Wesen des Gelehrten, Werke, vol. VI, p. 446: “Er glaubt nicht, dass 
ihm Etwas gelungen sei, bis ihm Alles gelungen ist, und bis sein Werk dasteht in der 
angestrebten Reinheit und Vollendung . . . So lange er dieser absoluten Freiheit 
und Reinheit sich nicht bewusst ist, hat er nicht vollendet, sondern arbeitet fort.” 

101 Jhid.: ‘“‘Ohne alle Liebe fiir seine Individualitét, treu hingegeben an diese 
Idee, die fortdauernd ihn erleuchtet, erkennt er mit sicherem Blicke alle Reste seiner . 
alten Natur in dem Ausdrucke der Idee fiir das, was sie sind, und streitet unablassig 
mit sich selbst, sich von denselben frei zu machen”’. 

102 Tbid., p. 447: “Auch die Persénlichkeit Anderer gilt ihm der Wahrheit und 
der Idee gegeniiber nicht mehr, als sein eigene.”’ 

103 Ju gendschriften, vol. II, Lyc. Frag. 37. 


32 THE THEORY OF “‘ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 


haustible, when it is quite truly itself, everywhere homogeneous 
and yet exalted over itself.’’1% 


At the same time that the artist refuses, as Young’s Shake-' 
speare, to mix any water with his wine, he must keep his wine 
unclouded and unadulterated by impurities from the very source 
of hisinspiration. ‘In order to write well on any subject,” Schlegel 
added, “‘the author must free himself from all personal interest in 
it; the thought which he is to express with high seriousness must 
already have lost its immediate attraction, must no longer actually 
occupy him. So long as the artist is under the sway of imagination 
and poetic rapture, he is not in a proper condition to communicate 
what he has to say. He will, in that case, be tempted to say 
everything ..... One who yields to such a temptation fails 
to recognize the value and merit of self-restraint, which, as we 
know, is the first and last, the most necessary and the highest 
quality that every artist and every man ought to cultivate.’ 

It is interesting here to notice not only how essential is the 
elimination of that which does not pertain to the artist’s peculiar 
vision, but also how imperative is the demand for intelligence and 
thoroughly awakened consciousness in artistic execution. It is 
true that Schlegel went much further than Schelling in his dislike 
of the unconscious element in artistic ecstasy, but it is equally 
true, I believe, that here again he more closely resembles the late 
art for art’s sake men in giving the artistic conscience almost 
complete autonomy in his doctrine of self-control as the highest 
and most significant quality in art. We have plenty of evidence 
that Goethe agreed with him here also. Only one instance will be 
noted. In his Autobiography, the great German described enthusi- 
astically yet regretfully the German poet Giinther, who might 
have been the great artist of his time. He had every quality 


104 Thid., vol. II, Ath. Frag. 297: “Gebildet ist ein Werk, wenn es tiberall scharf 
begrinzt, innerhalb der Grinzen aber grinzenlos und unerschépflich ist, wenn es sich 
selbst ganz treu, iiberall gleich, und doch iiber sich selbst erhaben ist.” 

105 Tugendschriften, vol. II, Lyc. Frag. 37: “Um tiber einen Gegenstand gut 
schreiben zu kénnen, muss man sich nicht mehr fiir ihn interessiren; der Gedanke, 
den man mit Besonnenheit ausdriicken soll, muss schon ginzlich vorbei sein, einen 
nicht mehr eigentlich beschiftigen. So lange der Kiinstler erfindet und begeistert 
ist, befindet er sich fiir die Mittheilung wenigstens in einem illiberalen Zustande. 
Er wird dann alles sagen wollen . . . Dadurch verkennt er den Werth und die 
Wiirde der Selbstbeschrainkung, die doch fiir den Kiinstler wie fiir den Menschen 
das Erste und das Letzte, das Nothwendigste und das Héchste ist.”’ 


Tue THEORY oF “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”’ 33 


essential to greatness in poetry except one, said Goethe, as he 
enumerated them, and that one was, “‘he did not know how to 
curb himself, and so his life, like his poetry, came to naught.’’!0% 

The main elements of the theory of the artist as realized in 
whole or in part by such men as Kant, Schiller, Goethe, Schelling 
and Friedrich Schlegel, as well as by a number of others necessarily 
excluded by the fixed limits of the discussion, are now before us, 
at least in their salient characteristics. The emphasis in the evolu- 
tion of this concept, it may be seen, has all along been placed not 
only on the artist’s freedom, but also on his recognition of law. His 
autonomy creates responsibilities which distinguish the artist of 
this school’s conception from the genius of Storm and Stress. 
This regard for limitation and law which is the outcome of his 
attainment of freedom and of his consequent capacity to discover 
the principles that must guide him is not to be confounded with 
any known species of formalism. Because of his freedom, also, he 
imposes upon himself the demand of perfection in his work, one 
more compelling, and at the same time more stringent, more 
exacting, it was believed, than that of any school hitherto known. 
It is this transcendent union of freedom and restraint, of liberty 
and of order that, in the estimation of these men, marks the true 
artist and him alone. 


106 D. u. W., vol. XXIII, 61: “Er wusste sich nicht zu zihmen, und so zerrann 
ihm sein Leben wie sein Dichten.”’ Cf. Goethe’s account of Byron. Gesér., vol. I, 
pp. 99-102. 





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